The Swedish development studio DICE is hesitant to make Battlefield: Bad Company 3 without knowing why fans were so enamored with the first two Bad Company games.
Their consternation makes sense if we reflect on how different the Bad Company games were in spirit, compared to other games in the franchise. The Bad Company games pioneered narrative Battlefield campaigns, where all the previous Battlefield games had been multiplayer titles. And where the Bad Company games had campaigns featuring goofy protagonists, Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4’s single-player campaign stories were more evocative of the Call of Duty series.
The multiplayer in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in particular stands apart. Karl-Magnus Troedsson, the CEO of DICE, reflected on this in an interview published June 24 on Eurogamer.
“But some people say this: the Bad Company 2 multiplayer is the best you’ve ever done. Okay, why is that? It’s hard for people to articulate what that is, which is actually hard for us. It would be hard to remake something like that. Can we do it? Of course. We have our theories when it comes to the multiplayer,” Troedsson said.
But for some, it isn’t such a mystery. GameSpot’s Aaron Sampson put together a video to demonstrate that it isn’t that difficult to articulate the appeal of Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
Sampson makes some arguments that those who love the game can wholeheartedly agree with. Granular destructibility, a smaller but more meaningful weapon set, and the spectacular Battlefield: Vietnam downloadable content expansion made Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s multiplayer shine compared to Battlefield 3 or Battlefield 4.
Maybe DICE will decide to revisit the Bad Company series after the release of Battlefield: Hardline this fall.
Image via Electronic Arts